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I would imagine for some kind of balancing. If you let people pick two factions, it'd be easy for some to go over from say Vanu to NC, sit on mumble with their Vanu buddies and relay info from what NC are doing, then just swap back. If you had to play different servers to be a different faction this wouldn't happen.

That's not really the issue, Arthur. The squads are entirely independent - the Vanu one came from PS2 players on the RPS forums, the NC one came from RPS Steam chat - if those of us who play NC on Friday wanted to play Vanu on Wednesday we wouldn't be in the Friday NC outfit.

They may be independent but that doesn't mean there isn't a crossover.
You might not be interested in joining the Vanu outfit but several others are.
I have played with both outfits in the beta and had hoped to continue to do so, as did several others I have talked to.

While it is certainly the case that people would have favoured factions anyway, I don't think it is helpful (for either faction) to force a choice in sides.
Now certainly it is SOE that are forcing us to make that choice but we have three options for how to respond:
1) Split the outfits between servers.
2) Use alt accounts to play both outfits on the same server.
3) Play with only one outfit.

Option 1) means the faction not on Miller has to (potentially) play on a less outfit/squad oriented server.
Option 2) means loss of account benefits and there is the potential for getting accounts banned.
Option 3) means less potential outfit members, at least for events, which may doom one or more outfits.

The best option is 4) which is that SOE just provide a faction spawn lock of a couple of hours to prevent quick switching but that is obviously out of our hands.

I would imagine for some kind of balancing. If you let people pick two factions, it'd be easy for some to go over from say Vanu to NC, sit on mumble with their Vanu buddies and relay info from what NC are doing, then just swap back. If you had to play different servers to be a different faction this wouldn't happen.

Well, you can always do that with a second account so this really doesn't stop anything. As it seems they are afraid of people switching over to the winning empire in fights but I don't see why they deem this a huge problem. For one people can just go to another continent where their empire is winning or use a different account to do the same. It's highly unlikely that most of the people who do that are paying customers anyway.

And still hoping for option 4 but well, I doubt this is going to happen. There are a few threads in the official forums but I won't get involved there. The official forums are like arguing with donkeys.

*edit*
No, I take that back. After reading some more that would be unfair to the donkeys.

Well, a second account is fine for you guys, but I paid good money for Alpha Squad and I fully intend to keep using said Alpha Squad benefits. I don't want to hop between accounts, and risk losing the one with Alpha squad on it. Subscription people would also be screwed.

I was playing in the beta and my account worked fine with the version of the game I got off Steam.

Yeah I played the beta a bit, but apparently the version you get off steam is NA-account locked, so EU players must download the ProSiebenSat.1 version if they want to play on EU servers, and I'd like to play with RPS folks. The thread I linked is very informative about the situation.

Originally Posted by DeVadder

i never bothered with steam and just downloaded the client from the international page, entered my SOE login and could play whereever i wanted.

Sounds strange. I have the Steam version, which as the link you provided said is locked to NA-accounts, but I have no problem logging into it with my beta account.

As far as I remember they said that all players in the eu would have to change/would automatically be swapped over to a PSS1 account, but they backed out on that saying that instead you would get a choice if you already made a beta account.

They also said it doesn't matter if you're on a PSS1 or SOE account, that you can play any of the servers.

EU players who participated in the beta can keep playing on the American version using their SOE account, it's still possible to play on the EU servers if you do this. If you didn't participate in beta you should get the Pro7 version.

Same thing happened to me starmatt. I've not been in any beta or created any accounts for PS2 before yesterday. Downloaded off Steam, went to create an account and got redirected to the ProSiebenSat.1 site and got sorted. Then, oh hey look at that, apparently my account was not valid.

Read about the issues with the EU client so gave up and went to play a game not run by drooling morons.

Urgh... What a gyp. I want to play with RPSers as both NC and VS! I've really enjoyed Purple Wednsdays so far, but VS are 2nd choice. If we put both outfits on one server, we split the players or have to have four outfits, which is evidently stupid. What a pain.

I suppose nobody has tried to play on a GT540m. Looking forward to playing with you, but a bit nervous whether my laptop can handle it. I will give it a try tonight.
On a side note. Bonkers, are you THE bonkers commander that ordered all 9 marines to buy flamethrowers when playing tram in natural selection 2.....when the alien com was playing shit? If so, good game sir!